Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general, and a homegrown AI model in particular, was mighty evident from one conspicuous detail related to the organising of the India Impact AI Summit in the capital this week. The PM’s decision to make at least three trips to Bharat Mandapam, the main venue of the mammoth event.
After his inaugural address at the AI Expo, Modi followed it up on Monday evening with a visit to the Expo itself, taking time to interact with the exhibitors and check out the stack of innovations on display.
Later this week, on Thursday morning, he will take the stage again at Bharat Mandapam’s main conference hall, where he will give the keynote at the formal summit on Thursday, this time accompanied by nearly two dozen world leaders, as well as some of the biggest names in technology today, including the top leaders from the likes of Google, OpenAI, Meta and Adobe.
The message from the top was clear: India is serious about AI, and pretty serious about using AI for bridging the gap between the global south and north.
Of course, the proof of the pudding may be in the eating, and we will have to wait and see how much India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem lives up to the AI challenge, but the optics were crystal clear: "Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya” as the formal motto of the summit goes, which translates into ”Welfare for All, Happiness for All".
It’s a tall ask for a country that is at best an ‘also-ran’ in the global AI sweepstakes as of now, but not for want of ambition, very apparently. As the banners that have gone up all across the nation proclaim ‘AI means all inclusive’, or, as the PM himself mentioned in his speech on Monday, “AI also stands for aspirational India.”
For a leader who has turned devising acronyms into a speechwriter’s essential requisite, AI is ripe for the picking. As the PM himself said earlier, “For us, India has double AI — for the world it may stand for artificial intelligence, but for Modi, it also stands for ‘aspirational India,” the PM quipped, referring to himself in the third person.
The PM’s time spent in the Expo was also indicative of the larger message of India’s need for local models for AI. Except for one or two instances, like his quick peek into the Meta (parent of WhatsApp) stall, for example, virtually all his stops at the Exhibition hall, mind you, we are talking of a 70,000 sq mt area spread across 10 arenas and some 300 curated pavilions, were carefully reserved for Indian AI efforts.
This included anything from Sarvam.ai, which is working on large language models (including, recently, translating Modi’s Mann ki Baat into various Indian regional languages in Modi’s own voice, using AI) to Bharti Airtel which is using AI fraud detection tools, to Pune C-DAC’s AIRAWAT (AI Research, Analytics, and Knowledge Assimilation) supercomputing platform and Noida’s Addverb, which uses AI and robotics for warehouse logistics.
The AI Expo will run concurrently with the India AI Impact Summit this week, and is conceptualised on three thematic ‘chakras’ — People, Planet and Progress. The Summit itself features a week-long set of seminars and discussions, peaking with the global leaders summit on Thursday and Friday.
MeitY minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also announced the imminent launch of a ‘Create in India’ mission in the country as an industry, employment and future-oriented mission. “(The Mission) will look at strengthening what we have, making sure we become the most preferred platform for the world (to create) a future-ready talent pipeline,” he said.